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Friday, June 7, 2013

How Do We Judge Success in a Democracy? - Bridging Differences - Education Week

How Do We Judge Success in a Democracy? - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

How Do We Judge Success in a Democracy?

Dear Michael,
I just wrote and discarded a 3,000-plus-word response to your queries. But I'll post it later on mydeborahmeier.com blog. There's just too much to say!
I essentially repeated my argument about why parents are not the problem; it's the conditions under which they have to raise their children, the obstacles they must overcome to cope with daily crises that are the problem—mostly related to poverty and racism.
I repeated my reasons for discarding as useless the data I get from the form of testing we have become addicted to. I've documented their fallibility in many an article in the past. There are too many possibilities for why kids get wrong, as well as right, answers—often having nothing to do with their mathematical or reading skills!
I'm arguing for another honored form of assessment that is based on carefully organized judgments about student work, work presented and defended in front of a panel of both internal and external experts. I'm arguing that this is the most direct and unbiased way to make such judgments and actually closer to what happens in